Just a small evolution, 374 buffers replaced with 574's to make the layout easier. Swapped the 245's around so I can use R/W signal from podule bus rather than having to invert it, saving a GAL pin. Clock pins for the latches are combined saving me another pin on thr GAL, together that made enough room for a 3 bit page latch for the ROM in the GAL, so removed the seperate page latch chip. Still uses the same ZIDEFS software.

I never find any Acorn stuff in the charity shops (nor any retro computer equipment at all, frankly) but I did bag this beauty today for the measily sum of £10 - has to be the bargain of the year, surely?!

Herman Miller Aeron Chair

I was a bit dusty but in fantastic nick and has cleaned up nicely - the mesh is all intact and the mechanism works. Lovely for the office!

I never find any Acorn stuff in the charity shops (nor any retro computer equipment at all, frankly) but I did bag this beauty today for the measily sum of £10 - has to be the bargain of the year, surely?!

herman miller aeron chair.jpg

I was a bit dusty but in fantastic nick and has cleaned up nicely - the mesh is all intact and the mechanism works. Lovely for the office!

Picked up a boxed Master and Cub monitor today locally. Been after either for a while at none-eBay prices and picked up both with boxes and manuals. Master is a bit yellow and needs recap but still... Even got some sealed 5.25" floppies chucked in

Once that is done time to upgrade it. Hope to get some inspiration for that down at ABUG on Sat

I forgot to post this last week - I won a 1990's JAMMA arcade cabinet on eBay justified as a birthday present to myself:

JAMMA cab

It needs a bit of TLC but has a sweet Hantarex CRT monitor in there with no screen burn and nice straight edges to the image. It looks a bit sad in the utility room for the moment but will find somewhere in the house to fit it! Next I need to work out what I'm going to put in it - currently has a 19-in-1 horizontal multigame JAMMA board but leaning towards a Raspberry PI with JAMMA interface for the 15KHz monitor.

Last edited by kieranhj on Thu Sep 06, 2018 9:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

I never find any Acorn stuff in the charity shops (nor any retro computer equipment at all, frankly) but I did bag this beauty today for the measily sum of £10 - has to be the bargain of the year, surely?!

herman miller aeron chair.jpg

I was a bit dusty but in fantastic nick and has cleaned up nicely - the mesh is all intact and the mechanism works. Lovely for the office!

I read that they were never designed as orthopaedic chairs, yet they're the most comfy desk char I have ever used, and I have a pair of fused vertebrae in my lower back so I'm quite sensitive to desk furniture.

For 50p in a charity shop today I picked up a 12" CD Video disc. Not to be confused with Video Cd or other similarly named and wholly incompatible formats, e.g. LaserDisc. I don't believe the charity chop even knew nor cared what it was they had.

I've never seen one before, and probably won't ever see another one in the wild. I can find very basic information about the format via searching online, so I was wondering if any of you had heard of or knew anything further about these.

The one thing I have found out is that it is likely suffering from rot due to the way they were manufactured, so will likely not play even if I can find a player for the CD Video format.

I'll post a picture if anyone is curious.

I'm writing a game where you can change your character from a Wizard to a monkey to a cat.

For 50p in a charity shop today I picked up a 12" CD Video disc. Not to be confused with Video Cd or other similarly named and wholly incompatible formats, e.g. LaserDisc. I don't believe the charity chop even knew nor cared what it was they had.

I've never seen one before, and probably won't ever see another one in the wild. I can find very basic information about the format via searching online, so I was wondering if any of you had heard of or knew anything further about these.

For 50p in a charity shop today I picked up a 12" CD Video disc. Not to be confused with Video Cd or other similarly named and wholly incompatible formats, e.g. LaserDisc. I don't believe the charity chop even knew nor cared what it was they had.

I've never seen one before, and probably won't ever see another one in the wild. I can find very basic information about the format via searching online, so I was wondering if any of you had heard of or knew anything further about these.

I'm glad they did to get to this point but computers in the 80s and 90s came and went from usefulness so very quickly.

Not sure I agree with this. I've found use for an Archimedes and/or RiscPC pretty much constantly since I first got one in 1990. I still find my A540 (released 1990) useful on a regular basis and, in some cases (e.g. recently creating a banner), it still seems superior to my brand new Windows laptop.

I got back into Beebs back in 2005 because I wanted to learn about microcontrollers for work. It seemed far easier (and less risky!) to interface them to a £5 second-hand Beeb than to my £1000 PC.

Modern computers are obviously vastly more powerful in many ways but much of that power just isn't needed for applications like basic word processing. So 90s (and 80s) machines can still be very useful

8-bit job lot from eBay I collected today. A super nice chap SE of MK was pleased to save this stuff which was otherwise destined for the tip. He offered me the the teletext adapter too FOC in case I can find a home for it

In exchange for an Atari Falcon 030 @14 Mhz with Fpu and internal CF etc...

From a friend who is an atari guy, like I am an Arc nut.

He never uses the A5000 and I never use the Falcon so fair doos.
Neither of us wanted to sell out. Yes I could have held on to the falcon for years and years and put it on ebay.
BUT... an 8MB RO3.1 machine is nice too. It is currently 4MB but I have an upgrade from my previous A5000, plus I have network cards etc... so it can go on my network and talk to the R260 in the back room ROFL.

In exchange for an Atari Falcon 030 @14 Mhz with Fpu and internal CF etc...

From a friend who is an atari guy, like I am an Arc nut.

He never uses the A5000 and I never use the Falcon so fair doos.
Neither of us wanted to sell out. Yes I could have held on to the falcon for years and years and put it on ebay.
BUT... an 8MB RO3.1 machine is nice too. It is currently 4MB but I have an upgrade from my previous A5000, plus I have network cards etc... so it can go on my network and talk to the R260 in the back room ROFL.

Pretty happy tbh. Both machines going to good new homes next month.

Well done Andy. Better that these machines stay in the hands of enthusiasts than collect dust in a "collection".

I forgot to post this last week - I won a 1990's JAMMA arcade cabinet on eBay justified as a birthday present to myself:

JAMMA arcade cabinet.jpg

It needs a bit of TLC but has a sweet Hantarex CRT monitor in there with no screen burn and nice straight edges to the image. It looks a bit sad in the utility room for the moment but will find somewhere in the house to fit it! Next I need to work out what I'm going to put in it - currently has a 19-in-1 horizontal multigame JAMMA board but leaning towards a Raspberry PI with JAMMA interface for the 15KHz monitor.

I was tempted to bid on that one, but glad I didn't.
You know what would make it look less sad, if you decorated the room as an arcade and to make it less lonely, get it a friend

Today I received the best cheap Signal Gen my budget would stretch to ...

Very useful pieces of kit. One slight problem to be aware of with a lot of these things is that you can get AC line voltages on the outside of the BNC connectors because of the floating switch mode power supplies used. That can cause a leakage current reportedly sufficient to blow FETs. I gather that the JDS 6600 is powered by an external brick so you might want to replace that power supply with a linear one at some stage. Alternatively you could always ground the BNC connectors (just as long as the circuit under test doesn't mind being grounded).

I have the FY 6600. I wanted the probe to be able to float so the first thing I did was to replace its internal switch mode supply with a simple linear internal one of my own design. I also isolated its USB connection using a magnetic coupler. It brought home how difficult it can be these days to get an old-fashioned transformer.